Arguing that universal public education was the best way to provide a quality education for all of America's children (by which he meant a Protestant-informed education for white children), Mann won widespread approval from modernizers, especially in the Whig Party.<ref name="Mark Groen 1854, pp 251–260">Template:Cite journal</ref> Eventually, all U.S. states would adopt many of the reforms advocated by Mann, including the creation of normal schools to train teachers and the feminization of the teaching profession.
Throughout his childhood, Mann experienced a variety of educational experiences from a vocational education working on the family farm to religious education. Mann came to see education as an essential component of a healthy childhood.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> From age ten to age twenty, he had no more than six weeks' schooling during any year,<ref name="Appleton">Template:Cite Appletons</ref> but he made use of the Franklin Public Library, the first public library in America. He enrolled at Brown University when he was twenty years old and graduated in three years<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> as valedictorian (1819). The theme of his oration was "The Progressive Character of the Human Race."<ref name= "Appleton"/> He learned Greek and Latin from Samuel Barrett,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> who later became a famous Unitarian minister.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Mann was elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1827 and, in that role, was active in the interests of education, public charities, and laws for the suppression of alcoholic drinks and lotteries. He established an asylum in Worcester, and in 1833, was chairman of its board of trustees. Mann continued to be returned to the legislature as a representative from Dedham until his removal to Boston in 1833. While in the legislature, he was a member and part of the time chairman of the committee for the revision of the state statutes, and many salutary provisions were incorporated into the code at his suggestion. After their enactment, he was appointed one of the editors of the work and prepared its marginal notes and references to judicial decisions. He was elected to the Massachusetts State Senate from Boston in 1835 and was its president in 1836–1837. As a member of the Senate, he spent time as the majority leader and aimed his focus at infrastructure, funding the construction of railroads and canals.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
In 1830, Mann married Charlotte Messer, the daughter of former Brown University president Asa Messer. She died two years later on August 1, 1832; he never fully recovered from the intense grief and shock that accompanied her death.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
It was not until he was appointed Secretary in 1837 of the newly created Massachusetts Board of Education that he began the work which was to make him one of America's most influential educational reformers.<ref name="EB1911"/> Upon starting his duties, he withdrew from all other professional or business engagements as well as politics.
As Secretary of Education, Mann held teachers' conventions, delivered numerous lectures and addresses, carried on an extensive correspondence, and introduced numerous reforms. Mann persuaded his fellow modernizers, especially those in the Whig Party, to legislate tax-supported elementary public education in their states and to feminize the teaching force. To justify the new taxes, Mann assured businessmen that more education in the workforce made for a richer and more profitable economy.<ref>Maris A. Vinovskis, "Horace Mann on the Economic Productivity of Education." New England Quarterly (1970) 43#4 pp. 550–571. online</ref>
Most northern states adopted one version or another of the system he established in Massachusetts, especially the program for "normal schools" to train professional teachers.<ref name="Mark Groen 1854, pp 251–260" />
Mann traveled to every school in the state so he could physically examine each school's grounds.Template:Citation needed He planned and inaugurated the Massachusetts normal school system in Lexington (which shortly thereafter moved to Framingham), Barre (which shortly thereafter moved to Westfield) and Bridgewater, and began preparing a series of annual reports, which had a wide circulation and were considered as being "among the best expositions, if, indeed, they are not the very best ones, of the practical benefits of a common school education both to the individual and to the state".<ref name="Hinsdale">Hinsdale (1898).</ref> By his advocacy of the disuse of corporal punishment in school discipline, he was involved in a controversy with some of the Boston teachers that resulted in the adoption of his views.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In 1838, he founded and edited The Common School Journal.
In 1843, he went to Europe to visit schools, especially in Prussia, under the board's auspices but at his own expense. His seventh annual report, published after his return, embodied the results of his tour. Many editions of this report were printed in Massachusetts and other states, in some cases by private individuals and in others by legislatures; several editions were issued in England.
Mann hoped that by bringing all children of all classes together, they could have a common learning experience. This would also allow the less fortunate to advance on the social scale, and education would "equalize the conditions of men." Moreover, it was viewed also as a road to social advancement by the early labor movement and as a goal of having common schools. Mann also suggested that having schools would help those students who did not have appropriate discipline in the home. Building a person's character was as important as reading, writing, and arithmetic. Instilling values such as obedience to authority, promptness in attendance, and organizing the time according to bell ringing helped students prepare for future employment.
Mann faced some resistance from parents who did not want to give up moral education to teachers and bureaucrats. The normal schools trained mostly women, giving them new career opportunities as teachers.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Mann believed that women were better suited for teaching, regardless of their status as a mother, and partnered with Catharine Beecher to push for a feminization of the profession.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
The practical result of Mann's work was meaningful reform in the approach used in the common school system of Massachusetts, which in turn influenced the direction of other states. In carrying out his work, Mann met with bitter opposition by some Boston schoolmasters who strongly disapproved of his innovative pedagogical ideas,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and by various religious sectarians, who contended against the exclusion of all sectarian instruction from the schools.<ref name="EB1911"/>
As the Old Deluder Satan Act and other 17th-century Massachusetts School Laws attest, early education in Massachusetts had a clear religious intent. However, by the time of Mann's leadership in education, various developments (including a vibrant populist Protestant faith and increased religious diversity) fostered a secular school system with a religiously passive stance.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
While Mann affirmed that "our Public Schools are not Theological Seminaries" and that they were "debarred by law from inculcating the peculiar and distinctive doctrines of any one religious denomination amongst us ... or all that is essential to religion or salvation," he assured those who objected to this secular nature that "our system earnestly inculcates all Christian morals; it founds its morals based on religion; it welcomes the religion of the Bible; and, in receiving the Bible, it allows it to do what it is allowed to do in no other system—to speak for itself. But here it stops, not because it claims to have compassed all truth, but because it disclaims to act as an umpire between hostile religious opinions."
Mann stated that this position resulted in a near-universal use of the Bible in the schools of Massachusetts and that this served as an argument against the assertion by some that Christianity was excluded from his schools, or that they were anti-Christian.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> A devotee of the pseudoscience of phrenology, Mann believed education could eliminate or reduce human failings and compensate for any biological flaws.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Mann also once stated that "it may not be easy theoretically, to draw the line between those views of religious truth and of Christian faith which is common to all, and may, therefore, with propriety be inculcated in schools, and those which, being peculiar to individual sects, are therefore by law excluded; still it is believed that no practical difficulty occurs in the conduct of our schools in this regard."
Rather than sanctioning a particular church as was often the norm in many states, the Legislature proscribed books "calculated to favor the tenets of any particular set of Christians."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Like many nineteenth century reformers, Horace Mann believed that "children would find it far more interesting and pleasurable to memorize words and read short sentences and stories without having to bother to learn the names of the letters".<ref name="ravitch-left-back">Template:Cite book</ref> According to Diane Ravitch, he condemned the alphabet method, claiming that it was "repulsive and soul-deadening to children".<ref name="ravitch-left-back"/> He described the letters of the alphabet as "skeleton-shaped, bloodless, ghostly apparitions".<ref name="ravitch-left-back"/> To him, teaching the alphabet was entirely illogical: "When we wish to give a child the idea of a new animal, we do not present successively the different parts of it,—an eye, an ear, the nose, the mouth, the body, or a leg: but we present a whole animal, as one object".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Mann believed that "children's earliest books should teach whole words, skipping the alphabet and the sounds of the letters",<ref name="ravitch-left-back"/> though he may have been confused between "the alphabet method of learning letters through words and a word method, now called the look-and-say method, or learning to read through saying the word as a whole".<ref name=millichap-dyslexia>Template:Cite webTemplate:Dead link</ref>
Mann's endorsement of "word method" for reading instruction made a lasting impression on other reformers of the period, and "by 1890 the alphabet method had virtually died out".<ref name="ravitch-left-back"/> Francis Parker and John Dewey used the "word method" as one of the features of the "Progressive" system of education. As Nancy Millichap notes, "Despite the enthusiasm of educators for their new methods of teaching, the illiteracy rate remained high. Among American soldiers enlisted in World War I, 24.9 percent proved unable to read or write, and during World War II, approximately the same percentage of British servicemen [who were taught using the same method] were found to be similarly handicapped. In 1940, one-third of high school students were incapable of mastering reading and writing well enough to profit from textbook instruction, and one-half of the adult population in the United States was functionally illiterate".<ref name=millichap-dyslexia/>
The backlash against "word method" culminated in a 1955 book Why Johnny Can't Read by Rudolf Flesch, in which he condemned this method for "treating children as if they were dogs" and recommended returning to teaching phonics. Nevertheless, the "ill-informed, ineffective reading instruction" remains the norm in American colleges of education and, accordingly, in American elementary schools.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Mann's efforts to update and strengthen Massachusetts's public education system began before he was appointed secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837. He frequently communicated with fellow public education advocates and expressed an interest in learning how other governmental organizations approached educating their children.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> As part of his trip to Europe, Mann reported he visited:<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
England, Ireland, and Scotland; crossed the German Ocean to Hamburg; thence went to Magdeburg, Berlin, Potsdam, Halle, and Weissenfels, in the kingdom of Prussia; to Leipsic and Dresden, the two great cities in the kingdom of Saxony; thence to Erfurt, Weimar, Eisenach, on the great route from the middle of Germany to Frankfort on the Maine; thence to the Grand Duchy of Nassau, of Hesse Darmstadt, and of Baden; and, after visiting all the principal cities in the Rhenish Provinces of Prussia, passed through Holland and Belgium to Paris.
Mann explains the similarities and differences he saw in the various countries, and most notably, the lessons that American educators could learn from the various structures. Later in his report, he focuses on Prussia, given it had, in his words, "long enjoyed the most distinguished reputation for the excellence of its schools." The country's system would come to be known as the "Prussian model" and included tax-payer funded schools, professional teacher education, and a "common" experience across all schools. Although his report covered a number of topics, including the education of deaf and blind children and mental health institutions, he focused his arguments on convincing the legislatures of the importance of a common elementary education and the professionalization, including training, of teachers. The common-school movement quickly gained strength across the North. Connecticut adopted a similar system in 1849, and Massachusetts passed a compulsory attendance law in 1852.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Mann's crusading style attracted wide middle-class support. Historian Ellwood P. Cubberley asserts:
No one did more than he to establish in the minds of the American people the conception that education should be universal, non-sectarian, free, and that its aims should be social efficiency, civic virtue, and character, rather than mere learning or the advancement of sectarian ends.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Arguing that universal public education was the best way to turn the nation's unruly children into disciplined, judicious republican citizens, Mann won widespread approval for building public schools from modernizers, especially among fellow Whigs. Most northeast states adopted one version or another of the system he established in Massachusetts, especially the program for "normal schools" to train professional teachers.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Critics of the common school, and later public school movement sometimes use the ahistorical phrase factory model school to describe the series of changes that happened to American schools over the 19th century.
In the spring of 1848, he was elected to the United States Congress as a Whig to fill the vacancy caused by the death of John Quincy Adams. His first speech in that role was in advocacy of its right and duty to exclude slavery from the territories, and in a letter, in December of that year, he said: "I think the country is to experience serious times. Interference with slavery will excite civil commotion in the South. But it is best to interfere. Now is the time to see whether the Union is a rope of sand or a band of steel."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Again he said: "I really think if we insist upon passing the Wilmot proviso for the territories that the south—a part of them—will rebel; but I would pass it, rebellion or not. I consider no evil so great as the extension of slavery."<ref>James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the Mckinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896 (1892) vol 1, Page 132. online</ref>
During the first session, he volunteered as counsel for Drayton and Sayres, who were indicted for stealing 76 slaves in the District of Columbia, and at the trial was engaged for 21 successive days in their defense. In 1850, he was engaged in a controversy with Daniel Webster concerning the extension of slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law, calling Webster's support for the Compromise of 1850 a "vile catastrophe", and comparing him to "Lucifer descending from Heaven".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Mann was defeated by a single vote at the ensuing nominating convention by Webster's supporters; but, on appealing to the people as an independent anti-slavery candidate, he was re-elected, serving from April 1848 until March 1853.
Mann was a staunch opponent of slavery as a member of Congress; in a written address to an 1852 "Convention of the Colored Freemen of Ohio" he stated: Template:Blockquote In the same address, he opposed plans to forcibly deport freedmen from the United States to other nations:
Template:Blockquote Mann considered there to be three legitimate methods by which the Africans in captivity in the US could emancipate themselves, including, as a last resort, that Template:Blockquote Mann's preferred method for the self-emancipation of the slaves was that free blacks should voluntarily form all-black communities of their own - either in Jamaica or in another Caribbean nation - or perhaps in the American West - in which men like Frederick Douglass, Henry Bibb and Henry Box Brown "instead of making speeches might be making laws. Instead of commanding the types of a newspaper press [...] might be commanding armies and navies" and could more effectively organize the liberation of their enslaved brethren in the U.S. from these strongholds.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In September 1852, he was nominated for governor of Massachusetts by the Free Soil Party, and the same day was chosen president of the newly established Antioch College at Yellow Springs, Ohio. Failing in the election for governor, he accepted the presidency of the college, which he continued until his death. He taught economics, philosophy, and theology; he was popular with students and lay audiences across the Midwest who attended his lectures promoting public schools. Mann also employed the first female faculty member to be paid on an equal basis with her male colleagues, Rebecca Pennell, his niece. His commencement message to the class of 1859 was to "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Antioch College was founded by the Christian Connexion, which later withdrew its financial support, causing the college to struggle for many years with meager financial resources due to sectarian infighting. Mann himself was charged with nonadherence to sectarianism because, previously a Congregationalist by upbringing, he joined the Unitarian Church.
Mann was also drawn to Antioch because it was a coeducational institution, among the first in the country to teach men and women in the same classes. Mann and his wife had conflicts with female students, however, who came to Yellow Springs in search of greater equality. The young women chafed at restrictions on their behavior and wanted to meet with men in literary societies, which Mann and his wife opposed.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
He collapsed shortly after the 1859 commencement and died that summer of typhoid fever. Antioch historian Robert Straker wrote that Mann had been "crucified by crusading sectarians." Ralph Waldo Emerson lamented "what seems the fatal waste of labor and life at Antioch." Mann's wife, who wrote in anguish that "the blood of martyrdom waters the spot," later disinterred his body from Yellow Springs.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He is buried in the North Burial Ground in Providence, Rhode Island,<ref>Horace Mann</ref> next to his first wife.
Historians treat Mann as one of the most important leaders of education reform in the antebellum period.<ref name="Mark Groen 1854, pp 251–260" /><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
At Antioch College, a monument carries his quote, which has been recently adopted as the college motto: "Be Ashamed to Die Until You Have Won Some Victory for Humanity."
Cremin, Lawrence A. American Education: The National Experience (1982).
Curti, Merle. The Social Ideas of American Educators (1935) pp. 101–38 online
Downs, Robert B. Horace Mann: Champion of the Public Schools (1974) online
Finkelstein, Barbara. "Perfecting Childhood: Horace Mann and the Origins of Public Education in the United States," Biography, Winter 1990, Vol. 13#1 pp. 6–20
Hinsdale, Burke A. Horace Mann and the Common School Revival in the United States (New York, 1898), in the Great Educators series online
Kalvin, Louis. "The Educational Philosophy of Horace Mann" (PhD dissertation, New York University; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1936 7303222).
Kendall, Kathleen Edgerton. "Education as 'The Balance Wheel of Social Machinery': Horace Mann's Arguments and Proofs," Quarterly Journal of Speech (1968) 54#1 pp. 13–21.
Messerli, Jonathan. Horace Mann; a biography (1972) online, a standard scholarly biography
Messerli, Jonathan. "The Early Education of Horace Mann: Home, Meeting House, and Village" Historian (1967) 29#3.
Murphy, Garry Paul. "Professional development of Massachusetts school teachers: An examination of the Horace Mann Teacher Program" (PhD dissertation, Boston College; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1990. 9101677).
Peterson, Paul E. Saving schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning (Harvard University Press, 2010)
Stornello, Joe Allen. "Horace Mann and twentieth-century educational historians: Problems of ideology and knowledge in historical texts" (PhD dissertation, University of Missouri - Kansas City; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1998. 9900319).
Taylor, Bob Pepperman. Horace Mann's Troubling Legacy: The Education of Democratic Citizens (University Press of Kansas, 2010).
Vinovskis, Maris A. "Horace Mann on the Economic Productivity of Education," New England Quarterly (1970) 43#4 pp. 550–571. online
Whiting, George C. "Horace Mann: A comparison of a traditional and a revisionist biography" (PhD dissertation, The College of William and Mary; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1989. 8923063).
Woodworth, Jed. "Horace Mann and the Revolution in American Childhood" (PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin - Madison; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2016. 10190139).
